Tuesday, 15 December 2009

Mizz Worthy/ Illamasqua contest entry - "reverse Rococo"

So i fancied making another look straight after i'd finished my 'inside the box' look, so was trying to think of a way to incoporate my face partly painted black (because that face paint i used takes a hell of a lot of scrubbing to get off).I suddenly got an idea that i personally think is really cool.

I adore the fashions of men and women from the 1700s and in the past i've dressed up as a rococo woman. The makeup they wore was incredibly dramatic, with faces painted stark white, red cheeks and lips and black eyebrows and beauty marks drawn on, here's an example from the net:

so i thought what i would do was create a rococo look but with the colours inverted. Here is the picture above inverted:

So here's what i came up with:

Once again, the execution is not perfect, but i think while the look is rather freakish it's also very interesting and cool . I used black face paint all over my face, layering it several times to make it as opaque as possible, then used a shimmery blue/green eyeshadow (it's a mac i've depotted and lost the name of :/) on my cheeks and lips, white mascara on my lashes, a tiny bit of pink eyeshadow (it's not in the example i found but rococo women sometimes used blue eyeshadow) and then drew on my eyebrows and beauty marks with white liquid eyeliner.

And now, the moment of truth! If i invert the photos of myself it looks like:

:D Pretty cool huh? Again, not perfect but similar to the original rococo inspiration! I'm pleased with the job i did and think it was in the spirit of thinking outside the box. It was so fun to paint up my face in such a bizarre, unusual way.

I'm hoping to squeeze a couple of looks in tomorrow before the contest ends and they won't involve me painting my face solid black! :P

Lillian, this is terrific! And creepy in a really good way! What a clever idea, and you executed it well! It's like a mask or a lovely, lovely alien. (This is Rachelle by the way, I meant to stalk you quietly as I tend to do but I felt compelled to gush a bit. I've been meaning to write you and Claire an apology for some time regarding my immaturity and general foolishness those years ago but as you imagine I keep putting it off.. but I suppose this is not the place to get into it, either.)

Such an amazing and clever idea - and this is a completely acceptable use of photoshop to executre the idea - I just didn't want any photoshopped entries which were used to "perfect" images etc - this is fab!